“If you have ever suffered from inhibitions and lack confidence in your own sensuality, you may benefit greatly from exploring your sacral chakra.” Natalie Southgate
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The sacral chakra – or Svadhisthana in sanskrit – means “sweetness” or “one’s own place”. I like to call it “the sweet spot.”
This alludes to the sensual bliss of an awakened sacral chakra, but more broadly to the awakening to a place in our own lives where we can embrace bliss in every area of our life. This chakra can be thought of as our own inner temple, our inner sacred space.
The sacral chakra, at the lower belly, is visualised as the colour of a vibrant orange sunset, and is the centre of femininity, sensuality, feeling and creativity.
Its element is water, so the imagery of the sacral Chakradance is of flowing rivers, the ocean, and the full moon.
Like water our sacral chakra is in constant motion. Tap in for a moment to your feeling state, your emotional senses, your senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Notice the constant stream of ideas, of creativity that streams through your mind. It’s in a state of movement, of flux, isn’t it?
Igniting the belly chakras is a great way to move through difficult emotions and replenish the lust for life, that can become depleted after prolonged illness or times of grief and sadness
Our culture tends to dismiss emotion, to see it as weak and unmanageable. We tell people to “pull yourself together” and “harden up.”
We all feel emotions, some of us more than others. So what’s the big deal, why are we so afraid of feeling?
Emotion is energy in motion, it is the moving out of energy from the unconscious into the conscious mind so we can deal with it. An emotion is like a message from within, and we need to be receptive to the messages.
Understanding that emotions move like water, gives us a clue to how to experience them. If we are in a strong current of water we can expend a lot of energy swimming against it, or we can go with the flow, and save our energy for paddling once the power has dissipated from the current, or in this case the emotional charge.
So how do we release emotions? We feel them. We allow them, honour them, dance in their rain, fly with their winds, bask in their sun. We stop resisting, denying and suppressing them. We allow our watery natures to flow.
Our modern lifestyles tend to be quite rigid. Most of us work in jobs where we are expected to be somewhere at a certain time for a certain time, often sitting still, working on a computer.
And yet this inner ocean needs to move, to ebb and flow. How do we create a safe space to be in this sacral chakra energy?
The sacral chakra is connected to our creativity, our flow. That there exists this connection between emotion, sensuality, and creativity, makes perfect sense to me. Making a conscious intention to revitalise our sensuality creates a shift into joy, and as a result we find ourselves smiling more, singing, feeling lighter. Feeling in the flow of our energy.
What makes you smile? What makes you happy? What makes your heart sing? What are you passionate about? Is there any reason not to follow your bliss? For many of us the secret to success in life lies in following our bliss and doing what we love, living in alignment with our natural gifts and talents.
Dance is a wonderful way to reconnect with our own sweet place. In traditional cultures dance is used as an important part of their ritual practice, as well as for the emotional and spiritual release it provides. Dance literally puts our energy into motion, releasing emotion, awakening our senses, freeing up tension in our body and connecting us with the deep essence of our spirit.
In Chakradance, the element of water comes through the sacral chakra. The sacral Chakradance expresses itself through the traditional belly dances of the East. This is the feminine centre, a centre that holds the key to our emotional life, to our sensuality. In the dance we visualise stepping into a stream and being washed clean of any stress or tension. Then we dance from the hips, our bodies undulating like water. Stimulating the natural ebb and flow of our being.
Dancing allows all parts of our being to engage in a delicious whirl of sensory experience, all the conflicting feelings and emotions and demands of life get to come up and play, express themselves, are rearranged, and often dissipate or transform into something completely new.
Instead of life feeling challenging, it feels like a dance in the ever-shifting waters of our own inner ocean.
5 Top Tips for balancing your sacral chakra:
1. Get support on any emotional issues going on in your life. This may include finding a form of therapy such as counselling or energetic healing, etc.
2. Try not to keep feelings bottled up, but find safe ways to express and release emotions, e.g. talking to a friend, chanting, dancing, painting, journal keeping.
3. Find a regular practice to help keep you emotionally balanced, e.g. meditation, yoga, chi gung, chakradance etc.
4. Create opportunities for pleasurable feelings in your life. Find the time to find to do things you really enjoy; create some ‘you’ time everyday; spend time with positive and uplifting people.
5. Create an emotionally calming environment in your home by cleansing your personal space with incense and burning candles.
Namaste, Christina
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Artwork by: Saeed Aktar and Maqbool Ahmed